Four Happiness Dumplings, with four little compartments, each topped with different colored ingredients. Diced mushrooms, diced ham, spinach stems, and egg skin are all steamed beautifully, their colors bright and vibrant, just like veggie hearts fished out of lard-added clear water.
Below the ingredients is the meat filling, a traditional dumpling filling that suits the general palate.
Of course, it's not all that traditional.
Before, when making Four Happiness Dumplings, Qin Huai always used a meat filling mixed with pork, mushrooms, and diced carrots. But recently, Guo'er has been making too much of the pork and diced bamboo shoots mixed with carrot paste filling, so every day, Qin Huai came to feel that carrot paste was better than diced carrots.
The taste of carrot paste isn't as strong as carrots; mixed in the meat filling, it's more suitable, and after steaming, the meat filling can retain more juice, improving the texture.
